


Mystery

by orphan_account



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: AU, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 17:51:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12940557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Angus McDonald felt there was something very important missing from his life.





	Mystery

Angus McDonald felt there was something very important missing from his life. Something important. Something that was so big it made his chest ache. Ache in ways he couldn’t even begin to understand, in ways he didn’t think he wanted to understand. It kept him awake some nights. Awake and shaking from half-remembered events and words that die in his throat and never quite make it to his brain  _ what _ he wanted to say. For the life of him, he couldn’t find what was missing. Couldn’t find what was wrong.

He was a famous boy detective, had all the belts and badges that went along with it as well. He  _ excelled _ at finding missing things! A fiery gauntlet hidden for years? No problem, he tracked it down to a small cave in virtually no time. A weird gem that kept trying to whisper things to him? Also not a problem. He followed every clue that somehow came his way until the shiny stone was safe in a case upstate. 

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t manage to find anything. Nothing seemed to resemble something he was missing. Nothing fit well enough to make the hollowness in his gut go away. 

Static clouded his thoughts every time he thought he just might have something solid finally. A splinter in his thumb and soothing words brought tears to his eyes. His guardian passed off the tears as a side-effect of pain, but he knew they had to be something entirely different. Spring always brought allergies and tears he knew couldn’t possibly be from them. Any church, temple, or shrine made his chest hurt during those few months. His guardian figured it was just sinner’s guilt and told the boy so. Angus forced himself to agree, even when he knew he had done nothing wrong.

What had the be the worst was the Laughing Elf. The sweets shop down the road with its fiery red sign and the bright macarons filling its windows. Just thinking about it was enough to give him one heck of a headache. He had to hold his breath, eyes screwed tightly together, every time he walked past in hopes the static didn’t eat away at his brain. 

He had briefly considered talking to his guardian about all this.But, he knew he couldn’t just admit things to another person he’d never admitted to himself out loud. How crazy would he sound if he sat his guardian down and said “Hey, I think I’m missing something really important to me and I hear a lot of static and sometimes I’m convinced nothing is real!”

So he decided to give it a month and try to think about a better way to approach it. In between missing persons cases and tracking down lost items, Angus could never find the words he wanted to say. They came out muddled, if at all. A month passed and he couldn’t bring himself to talk to his guardian. The summer solstice passed, the start of school began, and time kept cycling on and on until he couldn’t stand it anymore. 

Right before the autumnal equinox, Angus broke down while eating at the park. The food truck he’d always gotten his favorite tacos from was gone. It’d been gone for months now, really, but it hurt him to look at the empty space it’d once occupied. Hurt him in the same way spring did, the same way dogs did. Hard to breathe, and hard to think straight.

He’d tried to eat his packed lunch but couldn’t stop thinking about the missing taco truck. Gears spun so quickly in his brain it was hard to notice anything but the emptiness before him. Missing tacos shouldn’t have ever made him feel that way, but it hurt him so much he couldn’t stand it. He ran home without finishing, leaving his book and lunch bag behind.

With the sun setting against a beautiful red sky, he closed the front door and stepped into the darkness of his own home. On the run there, he’d decided he would rather have his guardian know about this than be stuck in such an awful rut all his life. He took a deep breath and called out to his guardian. No answer.

Angus sat in the foyer, on one of the couches close to the windows. The scarlet sunset glinted against the white wallpaper, nearly blinding him. With another deep breath, he closed his eyes.

“My brain gets all static-y, sir,” he announced to thin air, but shook his head with a sour expression. Too vague. “My chest aches all the time and I get these really bad headaches and…” He flopped against the couch and groaned. That one wouldn’t work either. All it would do was earn him another trip to his local pediatrician. Hearing another doctor tell his guardian that nothing was wrong with him other than an overactive imagination would kill Angus and he knew it. 

For hours on end, he announced tidbits to the foyer ceiling. Saying them out loud alleviated some of the pressure on his chest, but made his eyes swell up with tears. It was almost midnight when he stopped being able to form words, even though his guardian was late coming home. He curled up around himself and cried. Every now and then he would say something that would escape as static and sob harder. 

His guardian didn’t come home that night. Or the next night, or the night after that. Angus called his cellphone so many times the voicemail box filled up within hours. No cops showed up to collect the boy, his guardian’s work never called to ask where he’d been. He was just  _ gone. _

The school called to check up on Angus, and he made up a convincing lie about an exciting new case that called him to another state. The chief of police would call the principal soon, he promised with his fingers crossed behind his back. 

It wasn’t hard for him to connect the dots; his guardian had only disappeared after Angus made the conscious (and displayed) decision to tell him. Angus knew it had to be the actual act of him rehearsing that set off this event. It wasn’t the first time he had considered telling his guardian everything, but it was the first time he’d done so visually. 

Angus couldn’t stop himself from shaking every time his thoughts looped back to it, in between pacing the foyer and taking as much care of himself as he possibly could. He was actively being watched. This was some kind of awful punishment, one something higher up thought he deserved for nearly spilling the beans. There was something more to this than a slight brain mishap. It was sinister and the thought of it sat festering at the bottom of his brain. His skin crawled constantly and his stomach turned so hard he had a hard time eating.

Only when Angus, a boy detective so confused and lost he almost felt the need to remove the title from himself, decided out loud he’d rather not know than be alone all his life did his guardian appear at the front door with gifts and a smile so wide, so  _ sinister _ it shook Angus to his very core. His guardian made no mention of where he’d been, made no effort to show Angus that anything was amiss. He just shoved the presents - all books and candy - at the boy with that horrendous, wide smile.

That night, under the blankets and away from whatever mystical eye he knew had to be watching him, Angus set his mind on what he had to do. No matter the consequences to himself, he had to get to the bottom of it all.

What would such an evil thing want with him? What would be the point of interjecting itself into his life like that? Was the thing missing inside him so powerful, so important, it required Angus be a shell of what he assumed he must have been at one point? How much of his life was a lie? His guardian was fake, or at least controlled by whatever unseen force was doing all this, so what else was? His teachers? His cases? Was everything fake?

His mind had never buzzed with so many questions. No case had ever made him this curious, had ever made him feel this sort of excitement drenched in dread. For the first time in days, Angus let a gentle smile onto his boyish face. 

It was time to get to work.


End file.
